Where is freedom? by Ananya S Guha

Kashmir and freedom

I am not saying freedom

of speech, I am talking

of freedom in chains

we are born free

we are born to rise

or die

Kashmir’s many lies, lives

and death are now on the

way to freedom which it

can only understand, and

how the mind and body imprisoned

does not comprehend why it was done

what was done to annul a clause in the

Constitution to bestow freedom

Is man born without chain or fetters

if then why is there need to keep freedom

in bondage and warehouses?

Where O where is freedom, the statue

of liberty?

Too many news of death, by Ananya S Guha

Too many news of death

no news of birth

only statistics of population growth

India is overcrowded

India is dying with the living they say

Too many news of death

the population is a mere release of birth

but the death is in statistics

in the billions of birth

A story of a nation wanting to sort out births

not deaths

A millions will assault

A thousands will die everyday unreported

Too many news of death

the tears move in eyes of those born.

Amnesia by Ananya S Guha

You have cast your vote

now everything is sealed

hermetically, and when

the ballot boxes open

you know that winning or losing

either way is defiance of politics

and when the farmer protests

there is whimper that masses are

angry.

Where goes the hungry?

Either way winning or losing

is only an arcane way of saying

what will happen will happen.

Then, we will be amnesiac.

Two poems by Ananya S Guha

1

A crutch

I hold on

to

a swivel of hope

in

tantalising wind

the flesh summons

and the wind blows

into

skies as luminous

lights spread into

eerie silence.

2

Umbrellas are painted

sticks to ward off

evil and rains

also the encroaching

heat as a stick

is a rejoinder

to what is happening

in sun and sky.

War First Please, by Ananya S Guha

Fratricide

Holy or unholy

Wars bequeath a legacy

A turning point

Omens of all that is good

Only signatures of a damp life

We cut teeth into flesh

We make love in war

We spar damn it

Wars make things happen

Come to life

Cracking shells and mortars

Only the whimper lasts

Whisper of battle cries

And the deathly ghoul stands as sentinel

Come war means peace and all that goes

With war

Make peace and war at the same time

We need an excuse to have peace

War first please.

So a cold one, a hot one

Lukewarm if you please

Many hopes, many manifestations

That we love war to see blood curdling.

Death of a kind, by Ananya S Guha

And then the floods

flooded my birth

my country, flooded my hands,

feet and legs.

Why the floods

helicopters will do for a visit

a peep into the birth place

of many for whom floods

don’t mean anything

only death of a kind.

..

Floods in Kerala?

Want a national debate in?

So that television channels

can articulate death traps

or politicians who want both

votes and floods?

..

There is in floods

the call of oceans

only the maestro seeks

in hope that the floods

will not destroy his city.

..

Death of a kind

one kind, floods

that are testimony

to a tsunami effect

and the dog that forewarned

it. Keep your hopes alive.

A Mexican Child Speaks, by Ananya S Guha

Am I Mexican?

Where is my father?

my mother, where

are they?

Am I immigrant?

but, where is my mother,

father, sister?

where is home?

where am I?

where are they?

who are them?

my crying is not listened to

I crossed the borders

because they brought me here

where are they?

who have pushed me into

this dark, depressing room ?

..

Where is my country?

What is my country?

American Korean Imbroglio, by Ananya S Guha

Shadows are a protest

shadows of peace have

have been cast over two

countries signifying atavistic

quest on bullying, flexing zones

into the nuclear

now the quest is on for the nucleus

peace is hiding in shame

and nuclear zones tainted with

immortality!

---

Poem for Asifa by Ananya S Guha

Asifa, my love

burns burns

but they who burnt

and mauled you

their hearts have turned

rock like into sediments

of dirt, the goddess in

the temple must have

shivered in terror

O Goddess will you forgive?

don’t you remember when

you appeared from Kailash

during autumn rains, me as

a child watched you with your

dancing maidens, O Parvati

O Siva, where is Asifa now

in which forest of despair, death

and agony? What oblations

will greet you, me, her

where will all the children go?

shrieking in terror?

eight, nine, ten, twelve year olds

Asifa my dear beloved sweet little

girl of my country, they have desecrated

all the temples, churches, mosques and synagogues

in your little little world of horses, forests and peripatetic

travels. You can’t grant them any peace

Nor can I

Only the angry God with his trident can.

Writing Their Last Will, by Ananya S Guha

Farmers

want their

loans to

be ‘waived’

Industrialists

want them to

be ‘written off’

in each case

there is a plea

some are written

off and they take

refuge overseas

writing their last will.

Brokering Peace, by Ananya S Guha

Syria they have used

you as a battle field

for a long time

your body is a soldier ‘s

your skin pocked with infinite

marks of hurt before death

scarred with wounds

of women and children

where is your history

your soulful people

are they in the blood

of those fields?

where are those fiesty

signs, love or music

where are those who have

let this hell loose on your

bosom, where do they sit

or are they swathed in your blood

your coffins?

whose conscience

whose voice speaks in those

sabre rattles, in those booms

of artillery, who now will mediate

or broker peace

among mangled eyes, nose, face, ears?

Lenin’s statue is dead, by Ananya S Guha

Lenin’s statue

is dead

it no longer lives

in a world where

even statues are

killed.

The triumph of death.

Elections don’t end

in winning, there

must be antidotes to

living

see the skull of a statue

in preparedness of

a funereal choice.

..

Lenin’s statue is dead

the funeral is over

but the curfew to mock

the dead is still on.

Still on.

Lenin’s statue is proven

dead. Only the blood

does not cut stones.

..

(After the dismantling of Lenin’s statue in Tripura India on 6.3.017, as a result of  the electoral defeat of the Left Front government there).

God’s Forgiveness, by Ananya S Guha

Nine children died like

cattle bulldozed in Bihar

India, nine children

a drunken’s victims

drunk with death

carrying death

carrying blood in his hands

the faces of children harden

into death

as knives pierce souls

the death in our hands

the stain in our hands remind

that death is watching how many

to kill, children who with laughing

faces do not know that by the looming

seas death masquerades as man,

animal and beast at prey.

Nine families die instant deaths

nine fathers, nine mothers

the magic of numbers go on

the mask of death hoodwinks us

into belief  that the money as

compensation will bring their lives

back to masked faces

death on faces

in this land death stalks the holy

the unholy pray, in errant, visceral  voices

asking god’s forgiveness.

Names by Ananya S Guha

In India it is

names that cloud

skies, open

them into wrath

blood trickles

in faces, nameless

names that pester

names that hector

names that carry

burden of centuries

love, jihad, Aurangzeb

Nehru, Bharat Mata

names that keep vigils

on holy land and cows

names that live in hollow

breath, footsteps, names

that blaspheme

names that murder.

..

What are in these

Names? Games?

lush of sunshine?

metamorphosis of rocks?

names of temples, names

of Gods, names that plunder

names that like leaves sunder

fall, smoldering into

ashen death.

..

Forgive, I do not know

all the names

but I will wrench them

from time’s clasped hands

and unearth mortal remains.

India.

Begging Bowl by Anaya S Guha

withered incognito

beggar is attired

in finery

only the begging bowl

is visible to naked eye.

Seventy Years Of Freedom by Ananya S Guha

Mother, seventy

years of freedom

have shackled the

house that you made

with the British furniture

I steadfastly tie them

with a nation’s manacles

Even as the yellow house

grew, the nation shrunk

into cavernous hollows

of windswept children

sunken eyes

stained teeth

cadavers

a nation brought primordial

urge of death

now I swallow all symbols

of  oppression, forget them

to be caught in the cross fire

of a nation’s freedom.

Seventy years is a long time

I passed  only sixty in this nation

whirling into torrid seas

of  seas bludgeoned with

blood, and grime

of people who do not understand

these seventy hears of slow, slow time.

Your New Love by Ananya S Guha

You are falling in love

not with man or woman

you are falling in love

with Hindu, Christian or Muslim

 ..

With blood in your hands

or with blood  in the face,

toe, feet of somebody else

 ..

You are falling in love

with somebody else,

not  Hindu or Muslim

the blood in hands,

feet, the body

or a man hanged by the tree

 ..

Falling in love has become

so changed now, we love

a growl, a bark, a shot in

the air

 ..

You are falling in love

now with the land

not the sea,

your bruised hands

your new love.

Two Nations by Ananya S Guha

Now a cold war

has become hot

two countries

one strategy

neighboring

bordering on

Kashmir trauma

two countries

once one

history never repeats

who says?

history is born out of

ashes of nations fighting

petty destinies.

India and Pakistan

two nation theory

split into atomic sizes

only please don’t throw

the bomb.

Big brothers are waiting.

Woman Harassed on a University Campus by Ananya S Guha

In campus

there is rumpus

motor bike riders

harass a lady

male chauvinists

say: what made ye

roam around in dark

that is not a holy girl’s mark

We in India are made not to roam in dark

don’t you know, of  classes and castes ? Well,

they fly masts

Vice Chancellor poor old blighter

says eve teasing is mightier

simple case

of eve teasing mate

why all  this noise

when this is deemed your fate

in this fight

we men, after all

are right.

Your Only Death by Ananya S Guha

Now, Gauri Lankesh

what was your sin?

being a woman

a journalist ?

In India we mime rape

we love women in closets

then lust

now Gauri my dear

why didn’t anyone rescue you?

because you are ( were) not a cow?

They have got guts these revenge mongers

their guts are hidden in bloated stomachs

are you weeping for them?

Are they laughing their guts, sorry stomachs out?

Now, Gauri Lankesh tell our women not to be afraid

and our men to weep, while protecting the cow

tell women to fight with fistful of tears

Now that they have shot you, seven times I hear

near your house, we will make it a temple

so that these cow herds can come pray, chant

But you were not Muslim

I wonder why they killed you.

..

Chant. Chant. Chant. Pray

Gauri Lankesh emerge out of your coffin

in the second resurrection, so that these

pitiful cows are herded and rescued

from those dying like you.

..

Gauri Lankesh, I had never heard of you

today I hear, with Kalburgi, Dabholkar and the rest

My heart is stripped of love- death.

..

Gauri I love you

though the strip tease they  have done

faulted in your only death.

(On the murder of Gauri Lankesh, the journalist).